I'd hate to be the ISP. Even if they did everything right, they'd still have to deal with people who's home routers don't support IPv6, not to mention all the XP machines out there that would need to have IPv6 support turned on, and even then may not work correctly.
The only reason we have this much food available is mechanized farming which is highly dependent on fossil fuels (both to run the machinery and to make the fertilizers). Take away the cheap fossil fuels and there would be mass starvation.
No kidding. A 10-year-old PC is easy to deal with - pop in a PCI network card and boot a Linux live CD, and copy the data over. And that's assuming that the PC doesn't already have a network card and you can't just boot the OS on the hard drive. That'll work on most everything built since about 1997 or so.
Things don't really start getting challenging until you have PCs without PCI slots (not trivial to add a network adapter - yes I know there are ISA nics but they are non-trivial to get working), and no boot from CD (can't just boot a live CD), and no USB ports.
My guess is that if motorcycles have their headlights on, and cars do not, then the motorcycles stand out more. If everyone has their headlights on, motorcycles blend back in. Not sure if it make a big difference, especially nowadays when many cars already have daytime running lights.
If they're particularly evil, they'll set some kill flag in the BIOS before blowing the CPU. Put in a new CPU and try and boot it up, the BIOS sees that the kill flag is set and blows that CPU too.
Could make troubleshooting a dead Intel system somewhat interesting.
What you describe doesn't really sound like a processor kill switch, since it would be up to the BIOS/EFI and the 3G radio and once you have that you could use any CPU. I kind of figure they must put an eFuse on the processor, and the 3G radio can set up some kind of sequence to blow it, pretty much turning the processor into a (small) brick.
Well, with a LCDs now so cheap that companies are issuing 22-24" monitors to the employees now, I don't know if it's really a gain over the 15-17" CRT of yesteryear. Sure, they are thinner, but the ridiculous 16:9 monitors we have now still take up a lot of space because they are so wide. A dual monitor setup can easily span the entire length of a cubicle desk now.
I wouldn't call it unique. The open schools was a huge fad back in the 1970's, and like many fads in education, seemed to be implemented on a wide scale without any testing or studies to determine if it was actually beneficial. It could be unique though if it still retains its original design - my high school was built in a similar manner but it only lasted about 3 years before they came in one summer and walled it all off.
It's not so much human error as it is a design decision. For your typical PC, we are willing to accept an occasional error from the computer as a trade-off for it being considerably cheaper.
Well, actually it had to do with AMD not putting any thermal protection into the CPU and instead relying on the motherboard to detect the CPU getting too hot and shutting down. The main problems with that was the motherboard was not fast enough to save the CPU if a heatsink was not attached (there was no heatspreader, so the die overheated in less than a second) and many motherboards simply omitted the protection to save a few cents cost.
Note that AMD learned their lesson and the next generation had thermal protection built into the CPU similar to Intel.
After the Great Flood of 1993 (in the midwest of the US), several towns were not rebuilt in their original locations, but rather were moved to another location several miles away.
Do you even understand what the high frequency traders do? They look for situations where buyer A is willing to pay more than seller B is selling a stock for, and quickly run in and buy from B and sell to A before A and B can find each other on their own. As such, they add no liquidity, as they won't hop into a market unless there are already existing buyers and sellers.
Also, you might want to consider the billions (trillions?) in profits they make from doing this. That money has to come from somewhere, and it's from the other players in the market (that means you).
High frequency traders won't execute a trade until they already have a seller and a buyer lined up with margin that will make them money. Therefore high frequency traders add exactly zero liquidity to the market.
Re:That's one heck of a "long goodbye"
on
Goodbye, VGA
·
· Score: 1
You haven't had problems with monitors failing due to the capacitor plague? Usually an easy fix once you figure out how to get the case open, but I've seen plenty of dead LCDs because of that.
Also, I've seen burn-in issues on the cheaper ones after a while. Not sure if it's because TN panels are more susceptible to burn-in, or that the monitors are otherwise low end.
Re:That's one heck of a "long goodbye"
on
Goodbye, VGA
·
· Score: 1
My guess is that VGA is considered the lowest common denominator, as nearly everything can output an analog VGA signal. So it's assumed that if you're going to built a LCD, it has to take VGA or you're limiting your market. Now if you're cheap that's all you'll put on it, as DVI, etc is going to add more costs.
In a few years, it will probably be the opposite. HDMI (or maybe DisplayPort) will be the lowest common denominator, and you'll have to pay a premium to buy a monitor that still accepts VGA.
Re:And just to further that
on
Goodbye, VGA
·
· Score: 1
My experience is that LCDs are basically throw-away devices that aren't made to be repaired. The early ones are better, but the cheap ones that have cropped up since about 2004-2005 usually feature a snap-together case that is not meant to be taken apart. You can pry them apart, but expect mar the case in the process and snap some of the fasteners. None of the recent monitors have a backlight you can get to once it burns out. You would have to disassemble the actual panel, pulling apart the layers to get to the bulb, and it would never go back together quite right. Granted the LED ones may be different as I haven't taken one of those apart yet, but I doubt it.
I have fixed quite a few with bad capacitors, but that's about all you can do with them.
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You mean something more like the Asus EEE Keyboard PC? (though it does kind of blow through your price point)
The Prius's AC compressor is electric and can run a while off of the Prius's battery pack.
I'd hate to be the ISP. Even if they did everything right, they'd still have to deal with people who's home routers don't support IPv6, not to mention all the XP machines out there that would need to have IPv6 support turned on, and even then may not work correctly.
The only reason we have this much food available is mechanized farming which is highly dependent on fossil fuels (both to run the machinery and to make the fertilizers). Take away the cheap fossil fuels and there would be mass starvation.
No kidding. A 10-year-old PC is easy to deal with - pop in a PCI network card and boot a Linux live CD, and copy the data over. And that's assuming that the PC doesn't already have a network card and you can't just boot the OS on the hard drive. That'll work on most everything built since about 1997 or so.
Things don't really start getting challenging until you have PCs without PCI slots (not trivial to add a network adapter - yes I know there are ISA nics but they are non-trivial to get working), and no boot from CD (can't just boot a live CD), and no USB ports.
My guess is that if motorcycles have their headlights on, and cars do not, then the motorcycles stand out more. If everyone has their headlights on, motorcycles blend back in. Not sure if it make a big difference, especially nowadays when many cars already have daytime running lights.
If they're particularly evil, they'll set some kill flag in the BIOS before blowing the CPU. Put in a new CPU and try and boot it up, the BIOS sees that the kill flag is set and blows that CPU too.
Could make troubleshooting a dead Intel system somewhat interesting.
The first generation Celeron without L2 cache?
What you describe doesn't really sound like a processor kill switch, since it would be up to the BIOS/EFI and the 3G radio and once you have that you could use any CPU. I kind of figure they must put an eFuse on the processor, and the 3G radio can set up some kind of sequence to blow it, pretty much turning the processor into a (small) brick.
I seem to recall Apple killing jailbroken iPhones with their firmware updates.
Presumably this feature will be found in most if not all future Intel chips. How many people encrypt their harddrives?
I'd add B&H to that list.
Well, with a LCDs now so cheap that companies are issuing 22-24" monitors to the employees now, I don't know if it's really a gain over the 15-17" CRT of yesteryear. Sure, they are thinner, but the ridiculous 16:9 monitors we have now still take up a lot of space because they are so wide. A dual monitor setup can easily span the entire length of a cubicle desk now.
I wouldn't call it unique. The open schools was a huge fad back in the 1970's, and like many fads in education, seemed to be implemented on a wide scale without any testing or studies to determine if it was actually beneficial. It could be unique though if it still retains its original design - my high school was built in a similar manner but it only lasted about 3 years before they came in one summer and walled it all off.
It's not so much human error as it is a design decision. For your typical PC, we are willing to accept an occasional error from the computer as a trade-off for it being considerably cheaper.
Well, actually it had to do with AMD not putting any thermal protection into the CPU and instead relying on the motherboard to detect the CPU getting too hot and shutting down. The main problems with that was the motherboard was not fast enough to save the CPU if a heatsink was not attached (there was no heatspreader, so the die overheated in less than a second) and many motherboards simply omitted the protection to save a few cents cost.
Note that AMD learned their lesson and the next generation had thermal protection built into the CPU similar to Intel.
That one is listed in TFA.
After the Great Flood of 1993 (in the midwest of the US), several towns were not rebuilt in their original locations, but rather were moved to another location several miles away.
Do you even understand what the high frequency traders do? They look for situations where buyer A is willing to pay more than seller B is selling a stock for, and quickly run in and buy from B and sell to A before A and B can find each other on their own. As such, they add no liquidity, as they won't hop into a market unless there are already existing buyers and sellers.
Also, you might want to consider the billions (trillions?) in profits they make from doing this. That money has to come from somewhere, and it's from the other players in the market (that means you).
High frequency traders won't execute a trade until they already have a seller and a buyer lined up with margin that will make them money. Therefore high frequency traders add exactly zero liquidity to the market.
You haven't had problems with monitors failing due to the capacitor plague? Usually an easy fix once you figure out how to get the case open, but I've seen plenty of dead LCDs because of that.
Also, I've seen burn-in issues on the cheaper ones after a while. Not sure if it's because TN panels are more susceptible to burn-in, or that the monitors are otherwise low end.
My guess is that VGA is considered the lowest common denominator, as nearly everything can output an analog VGA signal. So it's assumed that if you're going to built a LCD, it has to take VGA or you're limiting your market. Now if you're cheap that's all you'll put on it, as DVI, etc is going to add more costs.
In a few years, it will probably be the opposite. HDMI (or maybe DisplayPort) will be the lowest common denominator, and you'll have to pay a premium to buy a monitor that still accepts VGA.
My experience is that LCDs are basically throw-away devices that aren't made to be repaired. The early ones are better, but the cheap ones that have cropped up since about 2004-2005 usually feature a snap-together case that is not meant to be taken apart. You can pry them apart, but expect mar the case in the process and snap some of the fasteners. None of the recent monitors have a backlight you can get to once it burns out. You would have to disassemble the actual panel, pulling apart the layers to get to the bulb, and it would never go back together quite right. Granted the LED ones may be different as I haven't taken one of those apart yet, but I doubt it.
I have fixed quite a few with bad capacitors, but that's about all you can do with them.
You really think that Microsoft gives every organization that buys a VLK the same key?
You wouldn't need a Mr. Fusion, a material with a refractive index of about 1.052 would do. Not sure how to implement it with a shell script though.